Probation practice in the information age

Abstract

This article analyses the implications of the greater use of technology and information in probation practice. Using data generated via an ethnography of probation, the article firstly argues that probation in England and Wales now exists in what scholars would identify as 'the information age' (i.e. that computers and other technologies work to define and create probation practice as we know it). The article goes on to use actor-network theory to analyse two 'heterogeneous networks' to explore the way in which probation practitioners and the technologies they use interact to create particular forms of practice. The article argues that unless we understand the technology that underpins practice we cannot fully understand practice. Finally, the article considers the implications of this analysis for probation post-Transforming Rehabilitation (TR).

Transforming Rehabilitation: Probation practice, architecture and the art of distributions

“…Foucault (1977: 144) used the example of the 18th-century factory, of the distribution of individuals in accordance with machinery, to emphasize how workers were at once separated and linked. The computer is, unequivocally, the machinery central to probation’s contemporary functionality (Phillips, 2017); it isolates staff in their work while ensuring that they remain connected to the national IT systems (Offender Assessment System [OASys] and nDelius) on which risk management depends. SCMs and CMs are assigned to a desk in one of the open-plan offices.…”

“…In this sense, technology should not be considered ‘anti-professional’, not least because the diversity of offenders’ circumstances requires individualized understandings (Robinson, 2003: 607). Instead, staff have accepted risk assessment and adapted to the inescapable reality of information technologies (Phillips, 2017): ‘OASys is a box-ticking exercise, but it is a useful guide. I’d be loath to lose OASys; it’s a good way of guiding what you think someone’s criminogenic needs are’ (Arthur, SCM).…”

“…Phillips, 2011), Matilda’s inference that information does not count if it is not recorded through the formal channels further accentuates an organizational bias towards digitized accountability over personal intuition. Here, ‘knowledge is reified and becomes “information” through the process of being written down’ (Phillips, 2017: 217–218). Practitioners are disciplined by a ceaseless and time-consuming obligation to record, and thereby generate, knowledge (Foucault, 1977).…”

“…As the (metaphoric) foundations which braced probation from public opprobrium and political interference crumbled, the (literal) architecture within which probation work occurs has been rebuilt in accordance with a managerial agenda (Phillips, 2014). Practice has been increasingly subjected to centralized control (Burke and Collett, 2015); removed from the communities probation serves (Bottoms, 2008); and reconfigured around information technologies, technicizing and depersonalizing ‘the humane face of the criminal justice system’ (Phillips, 2017: 211). Accordingly, the architecture of the probation office and its ‘artefacts of supervision’ (Burke and Collett, 2015: 83) have come to reflect a managerial emphasis on efficiency and accountability (Phillips, 2014).…”

Probation practice in a velvet cage? Specialist court work after probation privatisation in England and Wales

“…The subjective experience of operating in an iron cage was also very evident in the exceptionally high level of dependence of court team workers on the technological infrastructure which scaffolded their work (see also Phillips, 2017). When not interviewing defendants or sitting in courtrooms, practitioners spent the majority of their time in front of PCs, accessing offender databases, populating templates with data, and completing electronic case records and assessment tools.…”